<h2>Broadband a climate champion: ITU Puts forward ICT to bridge the ‘carbon emissions gap'</h2><p class="byline"><a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/03/itu_broadband_climate_report/">http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/03/itu_broadband_climate_report/</a></p>
<p class="byline">By <a href="http://forms.theregister.co.uk/mail_author/?story_url=/2012/04/03/itu_broadband_climate_report/" title="Send email to the author">Richard Chirgwin</a> • <a href="http://search.theregister.co.uk/?author=Richard%20Chirgwin" class="more-by-author" title="More stories on this site by Richard Chirgwin">Get more from this author</a></p>
<p class="dateline">Posted in <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/networks/">Networks</a>, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/03/" title="More stories published on this date">3rd April 2012 22:58 GMT</a></p>
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<p>The ITU’s Broadband Commission report, <i>The Broadband Bridge: Linking ICT with Climate Action</i>, is a good piece of advocacy – but can its prescriptions work?</p>
<p>The premise of the report is simple enough: the Copenhagen Accord seeks a capping of emissions at 44 gigatonnes of CO<sub>2</sub>
by 2020, but that’s unlikely to be achieved. There’s a gap of maybe 9
Gt according to the lowest-ambition pledges already made; and ICT can
help bridge that gap.</p>
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<p>The approaches the <a href="http://www.broadbandcommission.org/Documents/Climate/BD-bbcomm-climate.pdf">report</a>
advocates are also straightforward: the IT sector needs “greening”
(something nobody much doubts, since less hungry data centres, to pick
one example, are also cheaper to run); and ICT can help other sectors by
transforming industries (replacing physical goods with electronic where
possible), by changing work behaviours (for example, replacing travel
with telecommuting), by allowing developing economies to leapfrog
high-emission phases (for example, letting them start out with smart
buildings that can be carbon-neutral or provide a net benefit), and by
helping mitigation efforts.</p>
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<p>There's even a snippet of endorsement for Australia's approach, with
the report calling for national broadband strategies - something that
might at least offset the loopy bad-math sideswipes this country's
National Broadband Network keeps copping from <i>The Economist</i>.</p>
<p>The report is released ahead of the June 2012 UN Conference on
Sustainable Development in Rio, it’s so worthy it hurts, and I’m
pessimistic about it making any difference, because humans –
particularly as we discover consumerism – prefer to add than to
substitute.</p>
<p>While there are exceptions in books, newspapers, and CDs, all too
often people layer the new on top of their existing behaviours, rather
than substituting new-for-old. Sure, people buy, install and even use
videoconferencing systems – but how many executives give up the travel
budgets that represent their status?</p>
<p>Or there’s the interaction with communications technologies and work:
in spite of peoples’ ability to telecommute, any Sydney commuter will
agree with the official reports that traffic is getting worse as the
years go by. Instead of replacing the trip to the office, the
always-in-touch worker is supposed to do <i>both</i> - travel to the office, and make out-of-hours connections so as to keep working.</p>
<p>In spite of the pervasive belief that the Internet is destroying
television, you only have to watch Twitter at the right time to see that
people are adding their Tablet usage to their TV-watching.</p>
<p>The Internet is replacing any number of individuals’ trips to
particular kinds of shops, but the products they buy from the Internet
often involve international air freight as well as a local delivery van.</p>
<p>And that’s ignoring the other problem implicit in the ITU’s report.</p>
<p>As ITU secretary-general Dr Hamadoun Touré said in the report’s <a href="http://www.itu.int/net/pressoffice/press_releases/2012/16.aspx">release</a>:
“Addressing climate change implies completely transforming our way of
life, the way we work, the way we travel, shifting our model of
development to a fairer, more sustainable model to ensure our survival.
We need to put at stake all the resources available to us, and mobilize
the political will to turn discussions and negotiations into agreements
and actions.”</p>
<p>This is all well and good, but standing against it is a pervasive
mood against top-down solutions – particularly in countries like
Australia, America and the UK, and particularly in the face of the
problems facing another top-down solution, the Euro.</p>
<p>Take the focus on smart cities and smart grids, for example: while
these offer opportunities for advances in energy efficiency, the
opportunity is offset by political opposition that ranges from the
reasonable (if this is more efficient, how come we’re paying more for
power to fund the smart meter projects?) to the nearly-reasonable (is
smart metering at risk of being too intrusive?) to loopy (smart meters
will give you cancer).</p>
<p>In other words, any top-down project needs to be extremely well-executed if it’s to survive on the ground.</p>
<p>In spite of my personal pessimism, however, I’d encourage you to take
a look at the report: it provides a very good compendium of research
and research sources into the interaction between ICT and energy, and
even if the policy prescriptions don’t pan out, information is always a
good place to start. ®</p>
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